Non-standard CD audio?, Bought four CDs that don't play right, yet advertised as standard Options

[Bjossi]

I've bought Enya - Watermark, Enya - Shepherd Moons, Madonna - Erotica, Madonna - Ray of Light and Madonna - True Blue (Remastered Ed). All from play.com. All these CDs can play, but the audio is so distorted that the music is unlistenable. Windows has no problems seeing the CD, and my media player sees the tracks and can play them, but the sound quality is anything but acceptable.

All of them were advertised as standard CDs, and I can not find any mention of special requirements on their product pages. Back in 2009 I bought all of Yello's CDs from this website and none of them have this problem, including the remastered editions. This is really puzzling me as Ray of Light was bought from a different seller, and they are by different artists, released in different years. I only experienced this with CDs bought from that website, Amazon have always delivered CDs that play as expected.

My CD drive is named 'TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223B' (a Samsung drive I think.), with firmware that dates back to 2009 I think, can't remember the version.

Does anyone here have a clue what might be going on? Maybe you have one of these CDs bought from the same website?

Some further observations:
* Ray of Light was more stubborn than the others. It wouldn't play, but EAC could read it but had major trouble ripping it, and the resulting audio file made that struggle pretty clear. I suspect the seller misadvertised it as being in new condition.
* Some of these CDs were not in their factory seal despite being in new condition. Is this a common practice with online retailers?
* I'm pissed off!

EDIT: I should mention that I also bought Enya's And Winter Came and Amarantine that same day as the other Enya CDs, and they play just fine. I bought the Madonna albums few months later, earlier this month. Another CD bought from play.com that sounds normal is Electronic - Electronic, bought the same day as the Madonna CDs.

This post has been edited by Bjossi: Feb 26 2011, 15:43

[DVDdoug]

According to play.com's website, you can return defective merchandise and they will pay for postage.

I suspect the seller misadvertised it as being in new condition.
* Some of these CDs were not in their factory seal despite being in new condition. Is this a common practice with online retailers?

I don't think I've ever purchased a new CD that didn't have a cellophane wrapper, except perhaps CDs from "local bands". In addition, there's usually a hard-to-remove adhesive tape-seal along the top edge of the jewel case (maybe with a bar-code), and a foil-hologram "tamper-seal". Digipaks don't have the tape, but they have the cellopane and I think they also have the tamper-seal.

Did this come from play.com's "factory inventory", or from a 3rd-party seller? Was the price "too good to be true?" I wonder if someone downladed some (low quality MP3) files and some artwork, and burned/printed the CD?

[Akkurat]

Here's my experience/knowledge with the following:

I don't think I've ever purchased a new CD that didn't have a cellophane wrapper, except perhaps CDs from "local bands".

It's quite common to get perfectly new CD's without a wrapper. From Play.com too (not including PlayTrade sellers).

In addition, there's usually a hard-to-remove adhesive tape-seal along the top edge of the jewel case (maybe with a bar-code)

IME, this is only in USA.

and a foil-hologram "tamper-seal".

With maybe only 1 or 2 exceptions (these might be the few releases I've bought from USA), I've seen these only in CD's manufactured in Argentina.. which are very very poorly manufactured / bad quality.. easy to ignore these releases.

Digipaks don't have the tape, but they have the cellopane and I think they also have the tamper-seal.

I've seen many new digipaks sold without wrappers.. e.g. straight from (respectable) stores.